Nokia And Microsoft Team Up: Windows Phone 7 Coming to Nokia Phones, Symbian Dies
Announced today in London, Nokia plans to team with Microsoft to form a broad strategic partnership that would use their complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem. Furthermore, Nokia and Microsoft plan to work together to integrate key assets and create completely new service offerings, while extending established products and services to new markets. But here's the important part: Nokia is going to adopt Windows Phone as their "principle smartphone strategy," rather than continuing to support a dead operating system known by the name of Symbian.
Nokia fanatics are up in arms about this news, but it makes perfect sense. Nokia has fallen so far behind that there's simply no conceivable way that they could catch up to Android and iOS now. The only real option to stay in the game at all is to partner with Microsoft and hope to survive in 3rd place, while shooting for an even higher ranking. This really means that Nokia phones will be coming in time with Windows Phone on them, with the two companies sharing a roadmap and working together to collaborate on joint marketing initiatives.
Nokia has committed to "driving the future" of Windows Phone, and with the company's global reach, they may be able to push Windows Phone into markets that Microsoft would have a difficult time penetrating on their own. Of course, Microsoft has established that Bing will be the native search engine on Nokia devices, and their adCenter would provide search advertising services on Nokia's line of devices and services. To compete with Google Maps Navigation, Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft's mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft's Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.
Nokia's content and application store would be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience, but this may mean that Ovi Store is also dead. Meanwhile, MeeGo probably won't ever be the OS that Nokia hoped it would be. It's being relegated to an "experimental learning platform," so we wouldn't expect a great deal of devices to ship with MeeGo in the coming months; rather, Nokia will just use it to practice on things that they may import into Windows Phone, as an example.
It's also hard to tell when new Nokia phones will ship with Windows Phone 7 onboard; we're guessing it'll take a year or so to really iron things out, but hopefully it'll be sooner. No question, the mobile landscape just got a lot more interesting. Have a look at the full announcement below.
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I dont know what to think of this... when you take the windows 7 mobile platform... which is great, but still behind Android, iOS, WebOS, and BBos6.... and tack it along a failing handset manufacturer, i dont know whether thats a good thing or a bad thing. Heres my analogy: you have tires that start to expand and cause accidents when you exceed 50mph. you have a vespas that probably never touch 50mph... would you still use those tires on a vespa? i'm not referring the vespa or the tires as nokia and win7. Just using it as an analogy. |
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This shouldn't be too surprising. Symbian wasn't doing well, and Nokia's new CEO was a former executive at MSFT. A partnership in the software department between the two was likely. Too little too late perhaps? What you do have, as coolice pointed out, a mediocre OS with a failing hardware manufacturer, perhaps they can innovate and come up with something revolutionary...I'm not holding my breath though. |
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>> and Nokia's new CEO was a former executive at MSFT And who, it turns out, still owns nearly 240,000 shares of Microsoft. Can anyone say "Conflict of Interest"? |
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Wow...thank you for the information! Had to share it with my investor friends. |
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This does have a great potential, but I fear that Nokia (which is now run by an ex M$ employee), and Microsoft seem to be missing the big picture on a lot of things about this mobile internet revolution. I mean if they did not see it before from either side really (while the new Microsoft phones are a big improvement, they are even below Nokia's in popularity from what I have seen) will they be able to see it now? I really don't know as well as think that if you stick 2 blind men in a room it will still take them at least quite some time to find the door. The problem here is neither of these two have much time before there left behind so far they cannot catch up without innovation, which neither one has been able to completely accomplish so far. |
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I will add 1 thing to the previous statement. M$ does have both Office, and there upcoming cloud platform OS WIN 8. These two especially in a business sphere would seemingly give them a better foothold in a more cash strong area. The consumer platform is also formidable, but it is less money per device, and more money for fast innovation and change. They could very well make this a needed device or at least greatly so by combining the all into the cloud existing and coming software ecosystem. If they can do this I think in the long run it will probably be positive for them. That is however a lot of "if they can's" to 2 players that often do not work together well with others or so the past would say. They do sound in the video like they are glad to work simultaneously as well as together on this. I think it is probably a great opportunity for them both as up until now neither have made much noise (although M$ is even beyond Nokia in it it currently seems). They also talk about working at a fast pace, but I think we heard that from M$ at the start of the slate explosion, but never saw much at all until very recently. They also taked about there last phone system being enough for a couple of years before quickly wrapping up and delivering a nice device segment with the win7 phones. If you look at the market though up until now they don't have any real bite on the market. Yeah it seems to be a great device, but the other two major players in it have eaten a third of it already. While there is of course more market share to go they better be serious I think about one thing which is the rapidity they will be able to work together as well as on delivery of an end product. |
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